The change will be available to try starting February 8, 2022. It’ll become the default in April 2022. At that time, users can manually switch back to the old Gmail view if they’re not fans of the new look and feel. However, by the end of Q2 2022, Google said it’ll eliminate the old view and require all users to switch to the new one.
The new view has large buttons on the left side of the screen that’ll let you flip between chat and meetings quickly and easily in a more Outlook-like feel. It’s a move that makes sense, as Google wants you to use all of its tools instead of relying on something like Teams or Zoom for meetings. Putting them all front and center might incentivize people to use Google’s tools.
“We hope this new experience makes it easier for you to stay on top of what’s important and get work done faster in a single, focused location. Further, this will help reduce the need to switch between various applications, windows, or tabs,” said Google in a blog post.
We’ll have to wait and see how quickly people are willing to switch to the new view and how users feel when they can’t go back to the older one.
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